The UK WTC 9/11 evacuation study: an overview of findings derived from first‐hand interview data and computer modelling

Abstract

SUMMARY This paper briefly describes the methodologies employed in the collection and storage of first‐hand accounts of evacuation experiences derived from face‐to‐face interviews with evacuees from the World Trade Centre (WTC) Twin Towers complex on 11 September 2001 and the development of the High‐rise Evacuation Evaluation Database (HEED). The main focus of the paper is to present an overview of the preliminary analysis of data derived from the evacuation of the North Tower with an emphasis on frequency of occupant stoppages on stairs, occupant stair travel speeds and occupant response times. The paper also describes some of the evacuation modelling analyses of the evacuation of the North Tower undertaken as part of project HEED. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mental health status of World Trade Center tower survivors compared to other survivors a decade after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks

“…It is estimated that 87% of the 17,400 building occupants in WTC 1 and 2 survived by evacuating the buildings in a timely fashion [Shyam‐Sunder, ]. Earlier research studies have focused on these survivors’ experiences to help identify the individual, organizational, and environmental level factors associated with length of time to initiate and complete evacuation, and risk of injury [Galea et al, ; Gershon et al, ; Groeger et al, ]. However, these occupants consist of a sizeable group of people under direct life threat for whom the long‐term repercussions (e.g., mental health and risk behaviors) of their traumatic experience have not been examined.…”

The simulation of urban-scale evacuation scenarios with application to the Swinley forest fire

“…The approach adopted in this paper differs from previous work by providing a loose coupling between the evacuation simulation tool and disaster management system with the focus being on pedestrian rather than vehicle traffic simulation in response to large scale disasters. The agent based evacuation simulation tool buildingEXODUS while primarily used for building evacuation applications (Chooramun et al, 2012, Galea et al, 2008and Galea et al, 2011 has also been used to simulate large crowds in external environments (Pretorius et al, 2013 andGwynne, 2012). As part of the EU FP7 project IDIRA (Fire Safety Engineering Group, 2015b), the buildingEXODUS software was adapted to model large scale external spaces involving not simply the road network as current large scale evacuation models do (Lämmel et al, 2008, Lämmel et al, 2010 (Obe and Hsu, 2011) for PostgreSQL database (Drake and Worsley, 2002), OpenLayers (Perez, 2012) a JavaScript library for displaying map data in web browsers to develop a user friendly GUI that the strategic (command and control centres) and tactical (on-scene) commanders could utilise to specify input data for the EXODUS simulation such as: areas to evacuate, refuge locations, non-traversable areas and distribution and attributes of pedestrian population.…”

“…This paper provides an overview of the development of the EXODUS urban-scale evacuation modelling system (Chooramun et al, 2012, Galea et al, 2008, Galea et al, 2011, Pretorius et al, 2013and Siddiqui and Gwynne, 2012, and describes the application of the software to a case study involving the Swinley Forest fire that occurred near Bracknell in Berkshire, UK on May 02, 2011. As part of this work, the paper also describes the loose coupling of the EXODUS software to the Prometheus wildfire simulation tool (Tymstra et al, 2010).…”

Living and Working in Tall Buildings: Satisfaction and Perceived Benefits and Concerns of Occupants

“…Perhaps the most important research that have contributed to our understanding of human behavior in high-rise building evacuations are the studies of the World Trade Centre disasters in 1993 (Fahy and Proulx, 1995) and 2001 (Averill et al, 2012;Galea et al, 2012;Gershon et al, 2012). Based on first-person reports in various media and interviews with survivors, these studies provided data on escape and premovement times and actions, the flow rates in staircases, and the use of elevators (Kobes et al, 2010;Shields, 2012;Fahy, 2013).…”